The concepts of "before" and "after" don't exist. The past, the present, and the future,
all happen simultaneously as one. Such is how Dr. Manhattan experiences
time. Such is also how I felt for the past few days when I watched the
entire Watchmen HBO series, while in the US, all the racism news and the
corresponding protests and riots wrecking havoc across the country.
Never before had a fictional work about the racist problem in the US resonated with me so much. Real historical events like the Tulsa massacre and the KKK are mixed into the narrative of the series, while the seeing video of George Floyd where racism manifested so blatantly, so deeply rooted, so outrageously maddening, so unreal, for brief moments, I can't dissociate the fiction and the reality. May be the "Seventh Cavalry" and Senator Keene really do exist in our reality, may be President Trump is secretly financing the "Cyclops" movement, or may be I'm currently overdosing on Nostalgia and imagining I'm the Hooded Justice... Fiction and reality intertwine, every episode of Watchmen, every recent news from the US, just brings chill down my spine.
Watchmen is ... about how war and violence can be embedded in the law. And when violence gets embedded in the law, it can often evades judgment as a result. After all, justice is blind.
When Will Reeves puts on the mask to become the Hooded Justice, and when
in the end, he asks Angela: "When I put it on, you felt what I felt?"
Angela replies: "Anger." I felt that anger too. But Will adds on: "Yea,
that's what I thought too, but it wasn't. It was fear. It hurt."
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